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Lighting: Lighting Products for Video Ads

Full-bodied and complex. Golden in color with enticing aromas of nutmeg and gardenia. Deep, concentrated fruit flavors, interesting mineral complexity and a long, soothing honey-like finish. Yep, there it stands: a simple bottle of wine filled with some of the finest extracts and ferments from that ever-so-wonderful fruit, the grape. But there's a problem: you don't have a clue how to light this bottle and associated bottle opener in such a way as to liberate that delicate color and gentle nuance that your client has so lovingly described!

Where do you start? You tried the 100-watt overhead lamp usually reserved for interrogating your 10-year-old when he blasts a baseball through the window. You ended up with a teal green wine with a delicate splash of "black hole" shadows. Then came the kitchen fluorescents, and all you got were reflections resembling a blur of white noise. OK. That was bad, but not nearly as bad as the hot 500-watt bulb from your light kit that nearly set the whole place on fire!

Light - the most basic of all things natural, yet somehow it seems to mystify so many imaging professionals. Think about it: everything you see and every item you touch is a three-dimensional, physical "thing." And that "thing" reflects back light so your eye can see it. That is the key to lighting: understanding that "items reflect back light" and your job as an imaging professional is to capture "light."

In the process of capturing light, you can choose to struggle with it, give up and just get the footage; put a couple of lights up and just get the footage; or you can allow that physical thing and how it reflects light to inspire you - to shape your ideas about lighting. It matters not whether your light is from the sun, an artificial source or a mixture of both. It is your job to work with light, to shape it, to fit each lighting situation to your needs, to take advantage of it and make your imagery the best it can be.

It all starts with learning how to "see" light and recognize how light reacts with various subjects and how your camera reacts with light. Just as a painter carefully applies his paint to the canvas, a photographer or videographer applies light to his set.

Think back to those times when you woke up to a beautiful spring morning with sunlight dappled through the fresh leaves and the dew on the ground delicately lit by the sunlight skimming across the surface. Or how about that gorgeous atrium in the front entrance of some office or shopping complex you last visited? Remember that beautiful lighting, where everything was just so wonderful and clearly defined? You can easily recreate that lighting right in the comfort of your own home or studio. Or you can take your show on the road and recreate any lighting situation you or your client desires, so long as you follow a few simple rules. Rules! You say, "I don't like rules!" That's why I became a videographer! Yeah, yeah, I know, but there are rules in lighting that one should be aware of, that one should respect, lest one become a victim of those rules each time one shoots.

1. The smaller the light source, the harsher the light.
2. The larger the light source, the softer the light.
3. The farther the light source is from the subject, the "smaller" it becomes (relative to the subject).
4. The closer the light source is to the subject, the "larger" it becomes (relative to the subject).
5. Lighter subject values reflect back more light than darker subjects do.
6. The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflectance.

I know what you're thinking "What? I get the first five, but that last one is a bit... well...?" We'll start with the first rules and work our way up to that last one, because it holds the key to your successful understanding of light.

If you hold your hand in direct sunlight, you will notice harsh shadows, which reveal texture on your hand quite nicely. The same is true for any pinpoint light source, such as an incandescent light bulb or hot video light. If the light source is very small, such as a bulb from a hot light or direct sunlight, it really does not "wrap" around the subject, because it comes from only one acute or pinpoint angle. This would be perfect lighting if you were asked to simulate a desert scene by shooting a few rocks in a sandy field. You would end up with well-defined, harsh shadows. The lower the angle of your light, the longer your shadows would be and the greater the texture of the rocks and sand. But the shadows would show very little detail.